Our People

Martin Murphy

Principal/Executive Principal for AMAT Martin has extensive senior leadership experience over 20 years. He has been the Principal at Arden since 2011. He sits on the Solihull Young Peoples Trust Board, the LEP skills board/committee, the Executive Committee of the Solihull Chamber of Commerce for which he is a Patron. He is also an Educational consultant/advisor for the new UTC in North Solihull. Martin has an intensive focus on Teaching and Learning, student progress and curriculum development and major estate strategy experience.

As a Head teacher in Cumbria for 11 years he led a major expansion from 450 to 1500 students in a decade. Ofsted judged ‘the quality of leadership provided by the Headteacher as “outstanding”. The PE, sports curriculum and Sports Coordinator provision was judged by HMI as “outstanding” and one of the best in England. Martin opened the first private Day Nursery nationally in a secondary school with HSBC sponsorship and was Chair of Trustees. The Nursery was judged to provide “outstanding childcare and learning”, (Ofsted 2008, 2010 and 2013).

Damian Burgess

Headteacher at Park Hall Academy since 2015 and Vice-Principal at Arden since 2005, has held Deputy Headships in two schools. The areas he has led have been outstanding in four successive Ofsted’s with an SEN value added score the highest in the County. He sits on the Strategic Board for SEN, is Vice-Chair of the Authority Admissions Committee and sits on the LA Safeguarding Board.

Damian has contributed to SSAT training as well as leading training on Teaching and Learning and Inclusion in Park Hall Academy. He is a Lead trainer for ASCL on performance management.

Andrew Hinsley

Business Manager at Arden/Finance Director for AMAT. Andrew started working in 1978 in Local Authority Finance (Wolverhampton, Northants) and gained an HNC (Distinction) in Business Studies before switching his career to work in banking in the mid 1980’s.

Andrew spent over 20 years in retail banking and during this time held senior management posts such as Head of Behavioural Scoring for the UK Retail Banking portfolio and Credit Risk Director, Italy for European Operations of Abbey National (now Santander). In 2004 Andrew moved in to the education sector and became the Business Manager for St Paul’s Catholic School in Milton Keynes. Andrew has also worked as Business Manager for Moseley Park School in Wolverhampton and The Royal National College for the Blind in Hereford before joining Arden Academy Trust in March 2013.